Sunday, September 28, 2008

Yesterday on my blog I wrote about how my novel Whale Song will be gifted to 125 celebrities and special guests attending a huge event in November called Dallas Rocks 2008, which benefits Russel Simmons' Diamond Empowerment Fund and helps bring education and reform to those working in or affected by the diamond industry in Africa.

Being involved in this event made me think of films and books with diamond themes. Movies like Blood Diamond with Leonardo DiCaprio and novels like African Ice by Jeff Buick and Heart of Diamonds by Dave Donelson all paint brutal pictures of life for the African diamond miner and others involved.Dave Donelson and I share the same publisher (Kunati Books), and I'll admit I haven't read his novel yet. My stack of to-be-read books is overflowing and I have a couple of ARCs coming in soon that I'll need to read to provide cover blurbs/reviews, plus I'm finishing my next novel and editing a non-fiction work for Hope Mission.

From everything I've seen and read about Heart of Diamonds, this novel looks like a thrilling, tense read, with methodical research on the African diamond industry and the endless civil war in the Congo.

Here's a blurb about Heart of Diamonds:

Covering the endless civil war in the Congo seems like the perfect way for television journalist Valerie Grey to escape the tangles of her personal life. But complications arise—most of them red-hot dangerous—when she stumbles onto a diamond smuggling scheme that begins in the Congo and leads to the White House.